in november of last year, i created this digital collage from photographs i took in Haiti along with found and manipulated silhouettes . at the time, i was responding to an artist call by Culture Strike to commemorate the lives taken/affected by Hurricane Matthew in Haiti. the work is titled: Nou Led, Nou La. a common Haitian expression that literally translates into "We are ugly, but we are here." it is a gesture at modesty in response to questions like, "How are you?" or "What's up?" similar to another common saying "Mwen la," which means "I'm here," nou led nou la conveys a sense of resilience in the face of life's hardships. being here, present, can be considered a beauty onto itself and, even moreso, in light of the devastation that can befall anyone. 

currently, i'm working on turning this digital image into a installation work and i plan to install it in the second 5/5ths show at CCA. in many ways, my work is evolving to explore the spiritual through various encoded representations, with this piece being among the first to influence that process. i'm excited to extend it from the digital plane into three dimensional space.